Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony Sergei Eisenstein Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works. In the same series Jean Genet Jorge Luis Borges Stephen Barber Jason Wilson Michel Foucault Erik Satie David Macey Mary E. Davis Pablo Picasso Georges Bataille Mary Ann Caws Stuart Kendall Franz Kafka Ludwig Wittgenstein Sander L. Gilman Edward Kanterian Guy Debord Frank Lloyd Wright Andy Merrifield Robert McCarter Marcel Duchamp Octavio Paz Caroline Cros Nick Caistor James Joyce Walter Benjamin Andrew Gibson Esther Leslie Frank Lloyd Wright Charles Baudelaire Robert McCarter Rosemary Lloyd Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Cocteau Andrew Leak James S. Williams Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B. Sperlich Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony reaktion books Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London ec1v 0dx, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2008 Copyright © Mike O’Mahony 2008 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data O’Mahony, Mike, 1949– Sergei Eisenstein. – (Critical lives) 1. Eisenstein, Sergei, 1898–1948 – Criticism and interpretation 2. Eisenstein, Sergei, 1898–1948 3. Motion picture producers and directors – Soviet Union – Biography I.Title 791.4'3'0233'092 isbn-13: 978 1 86189 367 3 Contents Prologue 7 1 Experimentation 12 2 Consolidation 47 3 Transition 81 4 Hiatus 116 5 Reprieve 151 Epilogue 193 References 201 Select Bibliography 215 Acknowledgements 217 Photo Acknowledgements 219 Sergei Eisenstein during the Making of October. Prologue And just think! None, none of this might ever have happened! None of the sufferings, searchings, heartaches, or spasmodic moments of creative joy! And all because there was an orchestra 1 playing at the Ogins’ dacha at Majorenhof. Thus Eisenstein begins a short passage, titled ‘Pre-Natal Experience’, in his memoirs. Here, in a few brief sentences, the author has fully whetted the appetite of the reader, introducing an enticing, mysteri- ous narrative of intrigue that would grace the pages of any ‘penny dreadful’ typical of the fin-de-siècle world into which Eisenstein was born. In the same dramatic vein he continues: Everyone had drunk far too much that evening. A fight broke out and someone was killed. Papa grabbed his revolver and dashed across Morskaya Street to restore order. Mama, who was pregnant with me, was scared to death and almost gave birth prematurely. A few days passed in the fear of possible fausses couches [mis- carriage]. But that did not happen. I made my entrance into this world at the allotted hour, 2 albeit three whole weeks early. 7 When Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was born on 23 January (10 January old style) 1898, it may, or may not, have been in the wake of such dramatic events as these. Did his father, a civil engineer by trade, really carry a revolver at all times, and was he really so will- ing to dive into such a dangerous situation without consideration for his own safety? And if such an incident did occur, did it truly instigate such a dramatic, cliff-hanging moment, the future film director’s very existence swinging precariously in the balance, his mother on the brink of losing her only son before his birth? We can, of course, never know the answers to these questions. However, the main concern is less whether or not such events actually took place than how Eisenstein’s reconstruction of his personal history has shaped our understanding of his life and work. Eisenstein’s memoirs, written between 1 May and 12 December 1946 while he was recuperating from a heart attack suffered earlier that year, were never published in his lifetime. However, in the years since his death, various parts of his unfinished manuscript have entered the public domain (here all Eisenstein scholars must offer huge thanks to the Herculean efforts of Naum Kleiman and Richard Taylor for bringing this material to light). While Eisenstein’s memoirs offer fascinating insights into the life and practice of the Soviet filmmaker, it should be noted that his text is notoriously full of anecdotes and contradictory interpreta- tions. As his biographer Oksana Bulgakowa has suggested, Eisen - stein’s memoirs adopt the form of a Bildungsroman, with various episodes presented as trials which the hero overcomes on his 3 journey to character formation and maturity. Further, Eisenstein regularly employs conventional psychoanalytical tropes sometimes to allude to, at other times more explicitly to explain, his personality traits and the many crises in his life. He is variously brutalized by his father, abandoned by his mother, embraced and then rejected by his peers. His relationships with both men and women, as far as can be discerned, are strained and seemingly largely unfulfilled, 8 and, towards the end of his life, even his relationship with the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin takes on the characteristics of a typical parent–child (Oedipal) conflict. Other seemingly profound child- hood experiences are introduced as vital to his later development. For example, as a scientific materialist and self-confessed atheist, Eisenstein was a harsh critic of religion and spirituality, and yet religious rituals and biblical references permeate his works to such an extent that he was frequently criticized for excessive religious zeal by the Soviet censors. In this context, he recalls his nanny, who prayed daily before an icon of the Virgin Mary, and Father Pavel of the Suvorov Church in St Petersburg, who ‘went through Holy Week as if suffering the Lord’s Passion’, and whose ‘forehead exuded droplets of blood in the candlelight when he read the Acts 4 of the Apostles’. From this perspective, Bulgakowa’s allusion to Eisenstein’s life history as ‘the novel of a narcissist’ is both evoca- tive and accurate, and reminds us that both his memoirs and later 5 biographies should be read with a degree of caution. Yet it might also be added that Eisenstein’s memoirs – though sometimes factually unreliable – nonetheless cast intriguing light on other important aspects of his life and work. For example, in the anecdote outlined above he deploys a dramatic story as an illustra- tion of a wider set of problems and dilemmas. Throughout his adult life, Eisenstein struggled to resolve many contradictions, not least his own official support for the Soviet regime and its advocacy of materialism and collectivism, alongside his fascination for Freudian psychoanalysis with its emphasis on the individual psyche. Thus Eisenstein continues by trying to explain away the significance of the prenatal trauma he recounts: ‘It is of course hard to imagine that this episode could have left any impression 6 on me avant la lettre.’ Yet, in contradiction of this statement, he is also quick to point out: ‘my haste, and my love of gunshots and orchestras have remained with me ever since. Not one of my films 7 goes by without a murder.’ Indeed, cruelty and violence permeate 9 all of Eisenstein’s films, from the massacre of the workers in his first production, Strike, to the murder of Vladimir Staritsky in his last film, Ivan the Terrible. Perhaps the real questions about him are: Is this fascination with brutality the lasting legacy of such a dramatic prenatal experience? Or might it alternatively be a reflec- tion of the politically turbulent, all too frequently violent, times through which he lived? In what follows, I shall be offering an account of Eisenstein’s life coupled with an analysis of his major works. With regard to the first task, I shall not be seeking, as many have before me, to psycho - analyse my subject. The extent to which Eisenstein’s emotional experiences may or may not have directly shaped his work is as much a mystery to me as it is, I would argue, to others, despite claims to the contrary. Nor, it might be added, shall I be giving extensive attention to the question of Eisenstein’s sexuality, a subject that has obsessed many an author before this one. While the limited evidence available suggests that he probably had sexual relationships with both men and women, these, it seems, were sporadic and rare events in his life. I do not dismiss Eisenstein’s sexuality as irrelevant; such a claim would be patently absurd. Sexual identity, along with political, ideological and class identity, are clearly important factors in shaping individuals and thus their engagement with the world as articulated through their art. Rather, I simply acknowledge that insufficient evidence remains to offer a definitive statement on the matter. I shall therefore be giving greater priority, as far as is possible, to the material facts of Eisenstein’s life, the wider socio-historical context in which he lived and operated, and, most importantly, to the works themselves, the product of that existence. Following the conventions of much biographical writing, I shall adopt a broadly chronological approach examining, in turn, Eisenstein’s childhood and youth, early professional experiences as a young adult and his mature career up to his untimely death in 1948, barely a month 10 after his fiftieth birthday. To highlight the necessarily contingent nature of this task, however, and to embrace Eisenstein’s own sense, and literary reconstruction, of his life as a series of dramatic performances, I shall structure what follows into five chapters or acts, each examining a key period in his life and focusing on major works produced during that period.